OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
TIV-Diffusion: Towards Object-Centric Movement for Text-driven Image to Video Generation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Text-driven Image to Video Generation (TI2V) aims to generate controllable video given the first frame and corresponding textual description. The primary challenges of this task lie in two parts: (i) how to identify the target objects and ensure the consistency between the movement trajectory and the textual description. (ii) how to improve the subjective quality of generated videos. To tackle the above challenges, we propose a new diffusion-based TI2V framework, termed TIV-Diffusion, via object-centric textual-visual alignment, intending to achieve precise control and high-quality video generation based on textual-described motion for different objects. Concretely, we enable our TIV-Diffuion model to perceive the textual-described objects and their motion trajectory by incorporating the fused textual and visual knowledge through scale-offset modulation. Moreover, to mitigate the problems of object disappearance and misaligned objects and motion, we introduce an object-centric textual-visual alignment module, which reduces the risk of misaligned objects/motion by decoupling the objects in the reference image and aligning textual features with each object individually. Based on the above innovations, our TIV-Diffusion achieves state-of-the-art high-quality video generation compared with existing TI2V methods.
Prompt-Guided Mask Proposal for Two-Stage Open-Vocabulary Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

We tackle the challenge of open-vocabulary segmentation, where we need to identify objects from a wide range of categories in different environments, using text prompts as our input. To overcome this challenge, existing methods often use multi-modal models like CLIP, which combine image and text features in a shared embedding space to bridge the gap between limited and extensive vocabulary recognition, resulting in a two-stage approach: In the first stage, a mask generator takes an input image to generate mask proposals, and the in the second stage the target mask is picked based on the query. However, the expected target mask may not exist in the generated mask proposals, which leads to an unexpected output mask. In our work, we propose a novel approach named Prompt-guided Mask Proposal (PMP) where the mask generator takes the input text prompts and generates masks guided by these prompts. Compared with mask proposals generated without input prompts, masks generated by PMP are better aligned with the input prompts. To realize PMP, we designed a cross-attention mechanism between text tokens and query tokens which is capable of generating prompt-guided mask proposals after each decoding. We combined our PMP with several existing works employing a query-based segmentation backbone and the experiments on five benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, showcasing significant improvements over the current two-stage models (1% ~ 3% absolute performance gain in terms of mIOU). The steady improvement in performance across these benchmarks indicates the effective generalization of our proposed lightweight prompt-aware method.
Unsupervised Cross-Domain Regression for Fine-grained 3D Game Character Reconstruction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

With the rise of the ``metaverse'' and the rapid development of games, it has become more and more critical to reconstruct characters in the virtual world faithfully. The immersive experience is one of the most central themes of the ``metaverse'', while the reducibility of the avatar is the crucial point. Meanwhile, the game is the carrier of the metaverse, in which players can freely edit the facial appearance of the game character. In this paper, we propose a simple but powerful cross-domain framework that can reconstruct fine-grained 3D game characters from single-view images in an end-to-end manner. Different from the previous methods, which do not resolve the cross-domain gap, we propose an effective regressor that can greatly reduce the discrepancy between the real-world domain and the game domain. To figure out the drawbacks of no ground truth, our unsupervised framework has accomplished the knowledge transfer of the target domain. Additionally, an innovative contrastive loss is proposed to solve the instance-wise disparity, which keeps the person-specific details of the reconstructed character. In contrast, an auxiliary 3D identity-aware extractor is activated to make the results of our model more impeccable. Then a large set of physically meaningful facial parameters is generated robustly and exquisitely. Experiments demonstrate that our method yields state-of-the-art performance in 3D game character reconstruction.
Conformal Prediction on Quantifying Uncertainty of Dynamic Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Numerous studies have focused on learning and understanding the dynamics of physical systems from video data, such as spatial intelligence. Artificial intelligence requires quantitative assessments of the uncertainty of the model to ensure reliability. However, there is still a relative lack of systematic assessment of the uncertainties, particularly the uncertainties of the physical data. Our motivation is to introduce conformal prediction into the uncertainty assessment of dynamical systems, providing a method supported by theoretical guarantees. This paper uses the conformal prediction method to assess uncertainties with benchmark operator learning methods. We have also compared the Monte Carlo Dropout and Ensemble methods in the partial differential equations dataset, effectively evaluating uncertainty through straight roll-outs, making it ideal for time-series tasks.
MGM: Global Understanding of Audience Overlap Graphs for Predicting the Factuality and the Bias of News Media
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In the current era of rapidly growing digital data, evaluating the political bias and factuality of news outlets has become more important for seeking reliable information online. In this work, we study the classification problem of profiling news media from the lens of political bias and factuality. Traditional profiling methods, such as Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have shown promising results, but they face notable challenges. PLMs focus solely on textual features, causing them to overlook the complex relationships between entities, while GNNs often struggle with media graphs containing disconnected components and insufficient labels. To address these limitations, we propose MediaGraphMind (MGM), an effective solution within a variational Expectation-Maximization (EM) framework. Instead of relying on limited neighboring nodes, MGM leverages features, structural patterns, and label information from globally similar nodes. Such a framework not only enables GNNs to capture long-range dependencies for learning expressive node representations but also enhances PLMs by integrating structural information and therefore improving the performance of both models. The extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and achieve new state-of-the-art results. Further, we share our repository1 which contains the dataset, code, and documentation
CONCLAD: COntinuous Novel CLAss Detector
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In the field of continual learning, relying on so-called oracles for novelty detection is commonplace albeit unrealistic. This paper introduces CONCLAD ("COntinuous Novel CLAss Detector"), a comprehensive solution to the under-explored problem of continual novel class detection in post-deployment data. At each new task, our approach employs an iterative uncertainty estimation algorithm to differentiate between known and novel class(es) samples, and to further discriminate between the different novel classes themselves. Samples predicted to be from a novel class with high-confidence are automatically pseudo-labeled and used to update our model. Simultaneously, a tiny supervision budget is used to iteratively query ambiguous novel class predictions, which are also used during update. Evaluation across multiple datasets, ablations and experimental settings demonstrate our method's effectiveness at separating novel and old class samples continuously. We will release our code upon acceptance.
A Hybrid Real-Time Framework for Efficient Fussell-Vesely Importance Evaluation Using Virtual Fault Trees and Graph Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The Fussell-Vesely Importance (FV) reflects the potential impact of a basic event on system failure, and is crucial for ensuring system reliability. However, traditional methods for calculating FV importance are complex and time-consuming, requiring the construction of fault trees and the calculation of minimal cut set. To address these limitations, this study proposes a hybrid real-time framework to evaluate the FV importance of basic events. Our framework combines expert knowledge with a data-driven model. First, we use Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to build a virtual fault tree that captures the relationships between basic events. Unlike traditional fault trees, which include intermediate events, our virtual fault tree consists solely of basic events, reducing its complexity and space requirements. Additionally, our virtual fault tree considers the dependencies between basic events rather than assuming their independence, as is typically done in traditional fault trees. We then feed both the event relationships and relevant data into a graph neural network (GNN). This approach enables a rapid, data-driven calculation of FV importance, significantly reducing processing time and quickly identifying critical events, thus providing robust decision support for risk control. Results demonstrate that our model performs well in terms of MSE, RMSE, MAE, and R2, reducing computational energy consumption and offering real-time, risk-informed decision support for complex systems.
Solving the Inverse Alignment Problem for Efficient RLHF
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Collecting high-quality preference datasets for reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) is resource-intensive and challenging. As a result, researchers often train reward models on extensive offline datasets which aggregate diverse generation sources and scoring/alignment policies. We hypothesize that this aggregation has an averaging effect on reward model scores, which limits signal and impairs the alignment process. Inspired by the field of inverse RL, we define the 'inverse alignment problem' in language model training, where our objective is to optimize the critic's reward for a fixed actor and a fixed offline preference dataset. We hypothesize that solving the inverse alignment problem will improve reward model quality by providing clearer feedback on the policy's current behavior. To that end, we investigate whether repeatedly fine-tuning a reward model on subsets of the offline preference dataset aligned with a periodically frozen policy during RLHF improves upon vanilla RLHF. Our empirical results demonstrate that this approach facilitates superior alignment and faster convergence compared to using an unaligned or out-of-distribution reward model relative to the LLM policy.
Towards Using Machine Learning to Generatively Simulate EV Charging in Urban Areas
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This study addresses the challenge of predicting electric vehicle (EV) charging profiles in urban locations with limited data. Utilizing a neural network architecture, we aim to uncover latent charging profiles influenced by spatio-temporal factors. Our model focuses on peak power demand and daily load shapes, providing insights into charging behavior. Our results indicate significant impacts from the type of Basic Administrative Units on predicted load curves, which contributes to the understanding and optimization of EV charging infrastructure in urban settings and allows Distribution System Operators (DSO) to more efficiently plan EV charging infrastructure expansion.
SUGAR: Subject-Driven Video Customization in a Zero-Shot Manner
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

We present SUGAR, a zero-shot method for subject-driven video customization. Given an input image, SUGAR is capable of generating videos for the subject contained in the image and aligning the generation with arbitrary visual attributes such as style and motion specified by user-input text. Unlike previous methods, which require test-time fine-tuning or fail to generate text-aligned videos, SUGAR achieves superior results without the need for extra cost at test-time. To enable zero-shot capability, we introduce a scalable pipeline to construct synthetic dataset which is specifically designed for subject-driven customization, leading to 2.5 millions of image-video-text triplets. Additionally, we propose several methods to enhance our model, including special attention designs, improved training strategies, and a refined sampling algorithm. Extensive experiments are conducted. Compared to previous methods, SUGAR achieves state-of-the-art results in identity preservation, video dynamics, and video-text alignment for subject-driven video customization, demonstrating the effectiveness of our proposed method.
On Adversarial Robustness and Out-of-Distribution Robustness of Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

The increasing reliance on large language models (LLMs) for diverse applications necessitates a thorough understanding of their robustness to adversarial perturbations and out-of-distribution (OOD) inputs. In this study, we investigate the correlation between adversarial robustness and OOD robustness in LLMs, addressing a critical gap in robustness evaluation. By applying methods originally designed to improve one robustness type across both contexts, we analyze their performance on adversarial and out-of-distribution benchmark datasets. The input of the model consists of text samples, with the output prediction evaluated in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores in various natural language inference tasks. Our findings highlight nuanced interactions between adversarial robustness and OOD robustness, with results indicating limited transferability between the two robustness types. Through targeted ablations, we evaluate how these correlations evolve with different model sizes and architectures, uncovering model-specific trends: smaller models like LLaMA2-7b exhibit neutral correlations, larger models like LLaMA2-13b show negative correlations, and Mixtral demonstrates positive correlations, potentially due to domain-specific alignment. These results underscore the importance of hybrid robustness frameworks that integrate adversarial and OOD strategies tailored to specific models and domains. Further research is needed to evaluate these interactions across larger models and varied architectures, offering a pathway to more reliable and generalizable LLMs.
Agro-STAY : Collecte de données et analyse des informations en agriculture alternative issues de YouTube
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2024
Year: 2024

To address the current crises (climatic, social, economic), the self-sufficiency -- a set of practices that combine energy sobriety, self-production of food and energy, and self-construction - arouses an increasing interest. The CNRS STAY project (Savoirs Techniques pour l'Auto-suffisance, sur YouTube) explores this topic by analyzing techniques shared on YouTube. We present Agro-STAY, a platform designed for the collection, processing, and visualization of data from YouTube videos and their comments. We use Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and language models, which enable a fine-grained analysis of alternative agricultural practice described online. -- Face aux crises actuelles (climatiques, sociales, économiques), l'auto-suffisance -- ensemble de pratiques combinant sobriété énergétique, autoproduction alimentaire et énergétique et autoconstruction - suscite un intérêt croissant. Le projet CNRS STAY (Savoirs Techniques pour l'Auto-suffisance, sur YouTube) s'inscrit dans ce domaine en analysant les savoirs techniques diffusés sur YouTube. Nous présentons Agro-STAY, une plateforme dédiée à la collecte, au traitement et à la visualisation de données issues de vidéos YouTube et de leurs commentaires. En mobilisant des techniques de traitement automatique des langues (TAL) et des modèles de langues, ce travail permet une analyse fine des pratiques agricoles alternatives décrites en ligne.
PanSR: An Object-Centric Mask Transformer for Panoptic Segmentation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Panoptic segmentation is a fundamental task in computer vision and a crucial component for perception in autonomous vehicles. Recent mask-transformer-based methods achieve impressive performance on standard benchmarks but face significant challenges with small objects, crowded scenes and scenes exhibiting a wide range of object scales. We identify several fundamental shortcomings of the current approaches: (i) the query proposal generation process is biased towards larger objects, resulting in missed smaller objects, (ii) initially well-localized queries may drift to other objects, resulting in missed detections, (iii) spatially well-separated instances may be merged into a single mask causing inconsistent and false scene interpretations. To address these issues, we rethink the individual components of the network and its supervision, and propose a novel method for panoptic segmentation PanSR. PanSR effectively mitigates instance merging, enhances small-object detection and increases performance in crowded scenes, delivering a notable +3.4 PQ improvement over state-of-the-art on the challenging LaRS benchmark, while reaching state-of-the-art performance on Cityscapes. The code and models will be publicly available at https://github.com/lojzezust/PanSR.
Advances in Transformers for Robotic Applications: A Review
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

The introduction of Transformers architecture has brought about significant breakthroughs in Deep Learning (DL), particularly within Natural Language Processing (NLP). Since their inception, Transformers have outperformed many traditional neural network architectures due to their "self-attention" mechanism and their scalability across various applications. In this paper, we cover the use of Transformers in Robotics. We go through recent advances and trends in Transformer architectures and examine their integration into robotic perception, planning, and control for autonomous systems. Furthermore, we review past work and recent research on use of Transformers in Robotics as pre-trained foundation models and integration of Transformers with Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for autonomous systems. We discuss how different Transformer variants are being adapted in robotics for reliable planning and perception, increasing human-robot interaction, long-horizon decision-making, and generalization. Finally, we address limitations and challenges, offering insight and suggestions for future research directions.
Ares: Approximate Representations via Efficient Sparsification -- A Stateless Approach through Polynomial Homomorphism
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

The increasing prevalence of high-dimensional data demands efficient and scalable compression methods to support modern applications. However, existing techniques like PCA and Autoencoders often rely on auxiliary metadata or intricate architectures, limiting their practicality for streaming or infinite datasets. In this paper, we introduce a stateless compression framework that leverages polynomial representations to achieve compact, interpretable, and scalable data reduction. By eliminating the need for auxiliary data, our method supports direct algebraic operations in the compressed domain while minimizing error growth during computations. Through extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets, we show that our approach achieves high compression ratios without compromising reconstruction accuracy, all while maintaining simplicity and scalability.
MEATRD: Multimodal Anomalous Tissue Region Detection Enhanced with Spatial Transcriptomics
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The detection of anomalous tissue regions (ATRs) within affected tissues is crucial in clinical diagnosis and pathological studies. Conventional automated ATR detection methods, primarily based on histology images alone, falter in cases where ATRs and normal tissues have subtle visual differences. The recent spatial transcriptomics (ST) technology profiles gene expressions across tissue regions, offering a molecular perspective for detecting ATRs. However, there is a dearth of ATR detection methods that effectively harness complementary information from both histology images and ST. To address this gap, we propose MEATRD, a novel ATR detection method that integrates histology image and ST data. MEATRD is trained to reconstruct image patches and gene expression profiles of normal tissue spots (inliers) from their multimodal embeddings, followed by learning a one-class classification AD model based on latent multimodal reconstruction errors. This strategy harmonizes the strengths of reconstruction-based and one-class classification approaches. At the heart of MEATRD is an innovative masked graph dual-attention transformer (MGDAT) network, which not only facilitates cross-modality and cross-node information sharing but also addresses the model over-generalization issue commonly seen in reconstruction-based AD methods. Additionally, we demonstrate that modality-specific, task-relevant information is collated and condensed in multimodal bottleneck encoding generated in MGDAT, marking the first theoretical analysis of the informational properties of multimodal bottleneck encoding. Extensive evaluations across eight real ST datasets reveal MEATRD's superior performance in ATR detection, surpassing various state-of-the-art AD methods. Remarkably, MEATRD also proves adept at discerning ATRs that only show slight visual deviations from normal tissues.
One Pixel is All I Need
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Vision Transformers (ViTs) have achieved record-breaking performance in various visual tasks. However, concerns about their robustness against backdoor attacks have grown. Backdoor attacks involve associating a specific trigger with a target label, causing the model to predict the attacker-specified label when the trigger is present, while correctly identifying clean images.We found that ViTs exhibit higher attack success rates for quasi-triggers(patterns different from but similar to the original training triggers)compared to CNNs. Moreover, some backdoor features in clean samples can suppress the original trigger, making quasi-triggers more effective.To better understand and exploit these vulnerabilities, we developed a tool called the Perturbation Sensitivity Distribution Map (PSDM). PSDM computes and sums gradients over many inputs to show how sensitive the model is to small changes in the input. In ViTs, PSDM reveals a patch-like pattern where central pixels are more sensitive than edges. We use PSDM to guide the creation of quasi-triggers.Based on these findings, we designed "WorstVIT," a simple yet effective data poisoning backdoor for ViT models. This attack requires an extremely low poisoning rate, trains for just one epoch, and modifies a single pixel to successfully attack all validation images.